


talk to me (its okay if you can't)

by chocolateandmurder



Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Confessions, Discussion of mental illness, F/F, Fluff, Getting Together, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 01:37:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14438706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolateandmurder/pseuds/chocolateandmurder
Summary: “Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place: a city in itself” – Olivia LangWhen Wendy finally makes it out of the plane, the cool, crisp air hits her in the face and she takes a deep breath. For a second, she almost misses the snow.





	talk to me (its okay if you can't)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello its 3 am I decided to finish this fic to deal w/my writer's block but also bc tumblr user wendynasty deserves the whole world and I am....full of feelings 2nite. Slight warnings for lots of loneliness feelings and mentions of ED but both characters deal with it in healthy, pro-recovery ways

“Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place: a city in itself” – Olivia Lang  
When Wendy finally makes it out of the plane, the cool, crisp air hits her in the face and she takes a deep breath. For a second, she almost misses the snow. 

It snows in Seoul too, soft fluffy flakes lightly dusting the ground, but there’s something fundamentally different about the same weather in another city; some sort of metaphor about how places had personalities that seemed to bleed into the climate. In Vancouver, it would snow relentlessly during the coldest nights, thick heavy sheets that blanketed everything and made it impossible to push the door open when she was a little kid. It was the kind of cold that chased you, seeped into the cracks of the buildings, made you wear socks even to bed and turn up the heating. It was the kind of weather that demanded attention, that required every conversation to start with the words wow its really freezing today isn’t it? 

She’s always had a funny relationship with snow. Back in Canada it had been the biggest nuisance when she was a kid, forcing her to bundle up in layer after layer that eventually made her feel hot and suffocated, struggling to wade through mountains of the sparkling white power with her tiny frame that never seemed to grow taller. Mostly, though, Wendy used to hate how the snow blanketed everything around her and cut her off from the rest of the outside world in their old family home. Sometimes during early mornings when everyone else was fast asleep, she used to peer out of the windows with her hands pressed to the cold glass, watching the flakes swirl around outside with an aching sense of loneliness that was too big and too strong for someone so young. 

Now in Seoul, she couldn’t cut herself off from the world if she tried. The air in Seoul buzzes with friction, cars honking endlessly, the subway making endless loops, businessmen running frantically in the mornings and children heading off to their hogwans late into the night. Even the houses seem to get smaller and more cramped every time she returns even if that’s not actually possible, the thin walls leaving everyone inevitably eavesdropping on each other. In Seoul there is no feeling of infinity, of Wendy being swallowed whole by her feelings. Instead there’s only the relentless drive to push herself further to the breaking point, the intense pressure that can only come when everyone around you seems to be working harder than you.

( It’s not perfect but when you’ve felt it long enough, loneliness could be comforting. There could be some real, genuine satisfaction in that mass anonymity, in a place were you were known for nothing but your work. Wendy will take it, she thinks, as she unlocks the front door of her dorm, ready for to be confronted by a freezing cold apartment covered in dust and a todo list that will be miles long. It’s what she left home for. )

When she unlocks her door and walks into her dorm though, the heating has already been turned up and the curtains are drawn, muffling the sounds of traffic outside. The dorm is usually cramped, but now even more so thanks to all the cardboard boxes littered on the furniture and floor, as well as a bunch of grocery bags thrown on the table instead of stocked in the fridge. The shower isn’t running, but the bathroom door has been left open and the room smells like the fruity scent of shampoo. 

“Hey” says Seulgi. 

Wendy squints, trying to adjust to darkness and can just about make out a lump of blankets she assumes is her roommate and fellow student Kang Seulgi. 

(And girlfriend, if months and months of Seulgi flirting with her and Wendy misreading the signs and then one kiss and confession just before winter vacation qualifies as dating. Wendy isn’t sure how to have that conversation yet) 

“Hey” she replies, parking her meagre suitcase by the door, “did you seriously just come to the dorm and then go to sleep?”

“Uh no” says Seulgi indignantly,though the last word turns into a yawn, which kind of ruins the indignation. “I took a shower, you know. And went grocery shopping”

“And forgot to put away the groceries” she retorts, face twisting into a fond smile despite herself. 

“How was the flight?” asks Seulgi, stretching luxuriously in her bed and clearly trying to change the topic. 

“Alright” replies Wendy. It was hell; there was a baby screaming for atleast eight hours but that doesn’t matter. Right now, she’s kind of awkwardly shifting from foot to foot without trying to give that away because she’s tired and muddled and her eyes have adjusted to the darkness, so she can see Seulgi’s face, mouth crinkled into one of her usual smiles and her face all puffy and soft from sleep and it is…um…distracting. She doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’s terrified of saying the wrong thing. 

Seulgi hums thoughtfully, her voice raspier than usual from waking up. Then she sticks her arms out from under the blankets and makes grabby motions, gesturing for the other girl to join her. 

Wendy feels a small blush work its way onto her face despite her best efforts, still slightly frozen to the spot. Seulgi makes a whining sound, wiggling her hands adorably and Wendy relents, kicking off her shoes and carefully draping her jacket on the head board before crawling into the space Seulgi’s left beside her. It was freezing cold back in Canada but right now its so warm, with the heat of Seulgi’s body and the three blankets she’s wrapped tightly around them.   
Cuddling with Seulgi is both comforting and nerve racking, long before they admitted the kind of feelings between them: it’s just so much close proximity, the two of them pressed tightly against one another, Seulgi’s chest right upto hers and their legs wrapped around each other. She smells like shampoo and her skin is soft and warm in the kind of way it can be when you’ve just woken up. Wendy can feel her body struggling to melt into it and tense up at the same time.   
Seulgi notices, because she’s always noticed Wendy, long before the other girl thought there was even a sliver of chance that the great Kang Seulgi would even think of her as a friend, and she smooths Wendy’s bangs away from her forehead, shifting away a little so that Wendy can get space. 

“We didn’t really talk about what happened before you left, did we?” she says.   
(Here’s how it went: Wendy arrived in Korea and was given a student accommodation with a bubbly, bright dance major named Seulgi who seemed to single handedly be the most popular student on campus. Wendy had liked her obviously, subtly fallen for her the way every single male student seemed to, but college was disorienting and overwhelming even without the element of Wendy adjusting awkwardly to cultural and language differences. As the weeks past, she’d made a few friends, and was beloved by most of the professors, even on the days she didn’t have baked goods to give them, but Seulgi-almost too beautiful to be real Seulgi- had turned into the kind of roommate that seemed to care almost as much as family members in those movies Wendy had grown up on as a kid. She’d gently wake up Wendy on the mornings where she’d sleep through her alarm, leave her breakfast on the kitchen table, and approach her late night with soft suggestions to sleep. She’d invite her out for fun nights and plan for both of them to watch movies together, cuddled up in one bed like teenagers. Wendy didn’t really cry when she was sad, didn’t like to show that she was down, but Seulgi felt everything unabashedly and honestly, and more that once or twice Wendy had held her close to her chest, stroking her hair, reassuring her that it was going to be fine after specially harsh feedback. It’s a strange thing to admit, but it was a while before Wendy realized that this was what genuine connections felt like, that it wasn’t another person who’d be happy to hang around for the first few days before inevitably getting dissolved into their own real friend groups. 

Seulgi introduced Wendy to her own little group of friends, all brilliant and talented like she was, and somehow, Wendy fit right in, enjoying her own quiet time with Joohyun, fooling around with Soonyoung, and helping Yeri through her homework while the girl fretted about exams. The semester had gotten easier, something had loosened up in her chest after and Wendy had a regular list of acquaintances to hit up after that but Seulgi still remained the first person she wanted to spend all her time with, and both of them had jumped headfirst into the confusing, dizzying heights that came with adulthood, the person that she left with for ramen at three am in the morning. 

When Seulgi asked her out, it wasn’t an impulsive, late night thing though. Wendy had been packing, arranging everything neatly on her bed, when Seulgi had gotten up and stood next to her, hands clasped nervously. “I want to tell you something” she whispered, and then instead leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, a soft, nervous peck. Wendy had dropped the clothes she was holding, kissed her back, and then she had to get on a plane and not see her for the next three weeks)

“You sent me a text that was like three paragraphs long trying to assure me that nothing had to change if I didn’t want it to” says Seulgi, chuckling slightly. 

“In my defense, I was drunk” protested Wendy, still remembering sitting on the floor of her family bathroom, ignoring the Christmas party going on downstairs and squinting at her autocorrect. “And-and”-she’s stammering again, fucking hell-“I mean, I do mean it, nothing has to change if you don’t want it to or anything, three weeks is a really long time to think about things, I mean, I care about you deeply and your comfort comes first so-“

Seulgi smooths down her hair again, looking at her with the kind of pinched expression on her face, like what she’s saying hurts to hear in a way. “You’re so kind Wendy” she says, warm breath tickling her face. It makes her shiver. “But right now, you don’t have to be. Do you want to date me?”

Wendy feels her face go hot. It’s not really a sad moment, in fact its one of those moments that should make her scream and jump with joy if she watched it on a movie, but she feels tears prick the corner of her eyes even though she’s not sure why. “Yes” she confesses, and it’s the first time she’s put those feelings into words. It makes her throat go warm and itchy. “I would-would like to I mean I’ve wanted to for a long time but I’m-I’m not, like, um in tip top condition and I’d probably be really bad at it so sorry about that in advance I mean-“

Seulgi kisses her to make her shut up. Wendy makes an embarrassing squealing sound. 

“Sometimes, during the first year of college, you’d scare me” says Seulgi, and it’s a confession too, just not the kind that gets recorded in most movies. “You’d come over in the night, after a whole day of working nonstop, and you’d still be moving, cleaning, cooking, but your eyes would be completely dead. And you were so alone, coming all the way from Canada, with no friends, and it scared me, I didn’t know what do in the beginning, so I didn’t say anything- “

“-You didn’t have to say anything. You didn’t-it wasn’t your fault or anything, in fact it wasn’t anyone’s fault. I just…..I just had things to deal with”   
Seulgi’s still looking at her with furrowed brows, so Wendy leans forward and kisses her again. “Being here has helped so much” she whispers into Seulgi’s skin, “being here, I can’t-I don’t have the words for it yet but it helps so much”

There are a lot of things that Wendy used to convince herself Seulgi would never be interested, most of all the fact that she’s ill, and the kind of illnesses that other people don’t like acknowledge, let alone talk about. Being back in Canada was like trying to navigate a tightrope of feelings and should nots, it was endless questions about how much or how little she was eating, about how she should and shouldn’t have left, about all the things she’d missed since she’d been gone. It was family dinners where all she could hear was the sound of forks and knives scraping the plate and trying to pretend she didn’t miss the taste of eating ramen at midnight when both of them were too exhausted to think straight. It was spending hours in her bedroom with the door shut and falling asleep at odd hours of the day  
A question that both Wendy and Seulgi would have laughed at one semester ago: where did feelings go when you’d spent your whole life trying to crush them out of oblivion, bury them deep down? 

Wendy used to think they turned could disappear, melt away like the snow in Seoul, and that given enough time, everyone would forget about them when spring emerged, flowers blooming to cover up the bruises. Instead, she’d learned the hard way that they turned rock hard and settled into her throat and chest, bubbled up inconveniently in the form of tears late in the night and panic attacks during her worst moments. All those issues that she’d been convinced she was over had taken her by surprise, showed up in odd corners and alleys, held her down, and Wendy’d learned the hard way that feelings demanded to be felt, that there was no point pretending otherwise. It hurts, but it also feels so much more honest. Like the moment in spring when the snow began to melt into slush and it was nowhere as beautiful, but there was also nowhere to hide, all the cracks in the Earth laid bare to see. 

“I know you don’t like to talk about Canada” says Seulgi, lips pressed faintly on the skin of Wendy’s shoulder, her hands stroking Wendy’s back aimlessly, reassuringly. “And I know you overthink things a lot. But even if its hard, just remember you don’t have to worry when you’re with me”  
After so long of being deprived of it, it’s hard to recognize that feeling thrumming in her chest, melting her bones and causing something warm to bloom in her stomach: happiness. It’s been so long since she felt a sense of belonging, of that bone deep feeling of contentment, to the point where she’s slightly afraid of that feeling, but Seulgi gently tugs her closer and presses a soft kiss to her forehead and Wendy’s buries her face into the crook of her neck almost like she’s compelled. She thinks she might give up everything she had for Seulgi if the other girl wanted her to. She thinks she’s not ready to put that into words. Atleast not yet. But she can kiss the dip where her neck meets her shoulder, gently trace soft skin on her stomach, and lie in the dark together. 

“Do you think our laundry machines are broken again?” Wendy says, because she was musing about how the maintenance are probably late again on the taxi ride home, and weirdly enough, it’s the only thing she can bring herself to say. 

“Aren’t they ever year?” Seulgi is probably rolling her eyes, and Wendy can’t bring herself to turn around and check, too busy blinking away the last of her tears, but she kisses her shoulder as kind of a way to communicate anyway, to tell someone she loves them in messages transmitted through skin.   
“Welcome home” whispers Seulgi, kissing her forehead. And she’s right. Wendy’s home now. The rest can wait.


End file.
